“Bombed Last Night”: Singing at the Front in World War I

For soldiers in World War I, as in other wars, songs provided diversion and expression of common sentiments. Four song lyrics included here recorded soldiers’ responses, both to the new horrors of modern warfare and to the more general disillusion of men in combat. “Bombed Last Night” uses gallows humor to tame the dread of poison gas. “A Poor Aviator Lay Dying” uses the same kind of morbid humor to portray an aviator entangled with his plane, gallantly pleading for his comrades to salvage the parts, rebuild the engine, and keep on fighting. The lyrics to “Sittin’ in De Cotton” and “Tell Me Now” expressed, in the ostensible dialect of the southern African American, the widely shared sentiment of the soldier—the disillusion with war and will to survive.